In partnership with our friends at VT Vineyards, we’re planting Massachusetts’ first regeneratively farmed vineyard over the spring of 2026, 2027, & 2028 at Whittier Birthplace in Haverhill, featuring a test plot of 55 carefully selected, unique vinifera clones & hybrid varieties. Stay tuned for further updates though our main Instagram page + newsletter. Once vines are in the ground, we’ll be offering tours & events + have volunteer opportunities to get involved with harvest & more.

Our Varieties

We’ve selected our test plot clones with a focus on obscure vinifera & new hybrids that show strong potential with our growing conditions, but that are not widely planted + those that prove cost prohibitive to procure. We expect to have only a handful of cases produced from each variety in most cases once in peak production! Grape vines take three years to produce a first crop, so unfortunately, you’re going to have to wait until 2029/2030 to try wine from the new vineyard.

Vinifera—The grape species traditionally used for quality wines over the past several thousand years, originally from the Caucasus. Unfortunately prone to fungal disease and quite challenging to grow more sustainably.

Hybrids—Natural crosses of Vitis vinifera with other species of grape that offer enhanced disease resistance & cold hardiness while still producing great wine when well selected and grown + vinified with care, allowing for more sustainable growing practices and better yields in harsh climates.

Our Whittier-Merrimack Estate

 

Our Terroir

  • Physical Characteristics

    • Just over 1 hectare to be planted ultimately (~2.5 acres)

    • Hilly with SSE prevailing slope (except for a couple NNW rows we’ll be planting hybrids on in 2027)

    • Near sea level elevation (113-145ft)

  • Soil

    • Deep, loamy sand comprised of glacially deposited gneiss/granite/schist

    • Calgranofel bedrock

    • pH naturally 5.5-6 on average (rarely basic for typically acidic Eastern MA soils, which is necessary for vine nutrient uptake)

    • Approx. 3% average soil organic matter

  • Climate

    • Approx. avg. 2800 GDD Fahrenheit (~1500-1600 C) with 193 day growing season

    • Average low around 20F (~-7C) w/ temps below 6F statistically unlikely

    • Hot-summer humid continental climate classification (fun fact—humidity is our #1 challenge, not the cold!)

  • History

    • Pennacook land prior to the founding of Haverhill.

    • First established as a farm homestead in 1688 and used in various agricultural capacities since, with our planting being the first significant agricultural use beyond haying in decades.

    • Birthplace of 19th century poet & abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier.

Our Growing Practices

You may be more familiar with terms like organic & biodynamic for growing grapes, but we favor “regenerative” viticulture, which actually goes above and beyond organic standards. We encourage you to read on to learn about what “regenerative” means to us since there is no standard definition:

  • Dry farming (new planting/extreme drought aside) to reduce reliance on limited freshwater sources

    • We’re able to avoid the need for irrigation even on our well drained sandy soils by building soil organic matter to preserve moisture for grape vine roots to seek out in periods of low rain

  • No petroleum derived fertilizers

    • Grapevines don’t need huge amounts of fertilizer to begin with and providing organic nutrient sources that are less bioavailable actually helps wine quality!

    • We’ve got our own compost utilizing local wood chips, clam shells, grape pomace, & more + plan on grazing ducks beginning 2028 which provide further nutrients through urine and feces.

  • No herbicides + No insecticides unless absolutely necessary, focusing on other means of control (IPM)

    • There’s no excuse to use cancer causing chemicals to kill weeds, especially when it comes to growing grapes, for which there are many simple physical means of preventing potentially problematic vegetative growth under vines from weed-whackers and hand pulling, to mowing, rolling/crimping, and grazing…this is our biggest frustration sourcing grapes as “sustainable growing programs” still allow for the use of glyphosate! We’re even planning on integrating grazing ducks to help manage vegetation without even having to use electricity.

    • Insecticides are well known to pose ecological risks as well, particularly to bee/beneficial pollinator populations, and can generally be avoided with various cultural practices and biologics. We plan to closely monitor pest pressures and respond with the least harmful, and ecologically-focused control methods implemented first (including working with birds & beneficial insects and carefully managing cover crop & surrounding plant species). Our ducks will also help out here! Really bad pest pressure can prevent grapes from ripening and cause permanent vine damage though, so it’s important we keep our options open in a worst case scenario (such as a spotted lantern fly, sharpshooter (the source of an irreversible vine disease), or Japanese beetle infestation).

    • If IPM/Cultural/Biologic pest controls fail to keep damage to manageable levels, the organic insecticide Pyganic 5.0 is used (a chrysanthemum derived compound that rapidly breaks down in sunlight once used to knock back problematic insects with targeted hand spraying to minimize potential harm to beneficial insects).

  • No-till farming with polyculture cover crops promoting native species

    • We aim to do our part to support native bee populations and otherwise support ecosystem restoration, while building healthy soils and resilience.

    • No till farming practices allow us to build soil carbon, which enables net carbon negative farming through sequestration, enhances soil water retention, and improves soil fungal & insect ecology.

    • Over time we plan to seed native species to bolster habitat for native species.

  • Culturally minimized reliance on fungicides, utilizing a rotation of non-copper organic bio fungicides

    • Our big gripe with “organic” grape farming is it typically means fungal disease pressure devastates yields in humid climates like ours (a few super resistant hybrid varieties aside), and/or it means the vineyard is spraying a bunch of copper to prevent mildew outbreaks (copper is an “organic” fungicide that permanently accumulates in soil as a heavy metal, killing microbes & insects).

    • We’re picking varieties, planting parameters, and growing practices that are best suited to our growing conditions to minimize disease pressure.

    • To manage persistent disease pressure to economically tolerable levels, we’ll use very targeted sprays of a strategic rotation of organic biofungicides (essentially plant pro-biotics, plant-derived immunity boosters, and organic compounds like hydrogen peroxide). Typically in high pressure climates like ours, these are used in conjunction with conventional fungicides for maximum efficacy, but the most effective such fungicides are well known to pose hazards to invertibrates/aquatic life and human health. However, newer generations of biofungicides have proven more effective, and we have such a strong focus on rigorous cultural management practices we’re going to grow even the vinifera varieties 100% organic. We’re going to begin spraying in our vines’ second year (a whole year before they’ll produce their first crop) to try to prevent disease from even gaining a foothold in our new site.

    • We invite you to learn about our spray program here.

  • Quality > Quantity & Cost (our biggest challenge when buying grapes since growers get paid by the ton and thus tend to overcrop and cut out labor wherever possible, relying on carbon intensive and less-than-ideal-for-quality heavy machinery)

    • Hand pruned, sprayed, weeded (with the help of our ducks), & harvested

    • Optimally ripened & not over-cropped – “vine balance” + cluster, shoot, & leaf thinning where necessary

    • Carefully chosen site, varieties, row placement, & management practices

Our Sheffield-Berkshires Restoration Vineyard

June of 2026, we took over management of an abandoned vineyard site of approximately 1.2 acres in the Berkshires. We’re currently in the process of remedial prunning and cleanup work with the help of generous friends. Organically farmed Frontenac Noir & Frontenac Gris from this site will be utilized in our 2026 production (and we’ve got extra Frontenac Noir available for purchase!). Because the site is so far away and is heavy cropping with varieties that are tricky to put to use in large quantities (i.e. we can afford to loose a decent amount of the crop), we’ve decided to manage it largely no-spray/a much more hands off take on our home vineyard practices.

Learn more about our partner vineyards & additional varieties we work with

Lesser known varieties we buy but don’t grow:

  • Blaufrankisch–A Central European workhorse that’s in most of our red wines. Probably best described as somewhere between Gamay & Pinot Noir in flavor and character.

  • Marquette–The current gold standard for red hybrid varieties. It’s an offspring of Pinot Noir and shares similar fruity character to Blaufrankisch, with perhaps a bit less spicy depth.

  • Seyval Blanc–One of the original French hybrids from the early 20th century with excellent Chablis-like flavors & complexity. Its achilles heel is its very light body, making it better suited to blending than use as a varietal.

  • Vidal Blanc–Another of the original French hybrids with the opposite problem as Seyval…it’s not the most exciting tasting but is quite balanced and has decent structure, again, making it a better blending component than varietal wine. We’ve discovered it really shines with skin contact though.

  • Valvin Muscat–A very punchy muscat hybrid that has flavors very reminiscent of Cascade hops.

  • La Crescent–One of our absolute favorite hybrids, but not the easiest to grow or work with. It’s got a quite distinct muscat character with skin contact…orange blossom/honeysuckle/stonefruit…but much more restrained and citrusy without skin contact. The problem is, it tends to borderline unpalatable levels of acidity, making it better suited for blends than varietals.

  • Cayuga White–Not a great name, but a gem of 20th century breeding. Cayuga is pretty neutral, well balanced, citrusy, and slightly mineral driven…not dissimilar to Pinot Blanc in many regards. One of the few hybrids that stands as a varietal.

  • Arandell–A bold, finicky newer red hybrid from Cornell that packs a serious punch with its herbaceous cedar notes. We find it actually shines best as a rosé, delivering vibrant red cherry notes.

Our Vineyard Partners:

  • Lake Road Vineyard (Finger Lakes AVA)– Located on the East side of Lake Cayuga with West facing aspects, Lake Road is one of the few Finger Lakes growers that really cares about what they're applying in the vineyard to the same degree as our own operations…while many others in the Finger Lakes follow the bare minimum sustainable growing program requirements (which still allows for carcinogenic glyphosate and other very problematic-yet-legal sprays). They also work with varied clonal selections, treating them as the unique fruit they are.

  • Lieb Vineyard (Long Island AVA)– Located on the North Fork of Long Island, they too have long gone above and beyond sustainable growing standards, always utilizing mechanical weed control rather than herbicide. They've also got some of the oldest Pinot Blanc vines in the country, which we're putting to great use in a number of our wines.

  • Semelka Vineyard (Lake Erie AVA)– Located on the South shore of Lake Erie in the heart of table/juice grape country, Cortenay is growing some of the finest Saperavi we've ever tasted with a spray program again exceeding sustainable growing program standards.

  • Onabay Vineyard (Long Island AVA)– A sustainable passion project vineyard on Long Island growing some of the best Bordeaux varieties on the East Coast. If top notch more conventional single vineyard Bordeaux blend appeals to you, we highly recommend John's Leo Family Cellars label.

  • Doyle Keuka Lake Vineyards (Finger Lakes AVA)– Unfortunately the most conventional vineyard we source from, yet with excellent terroir. We've been working with them since 2024 to improve their growing practices beyond the minimum sustainable growing program standards. The vineyard sits East facing on the west shore of Keuka Lake, neighboring the esteemed Dr. Konstantin Frank winery. In 2024 we piloted improvements to their growing practices, eliminating the use of herbicides on a portion of their acreage.

  • Jacob Thomas Vineyard (Finger Lakes AVA)– Our sustainable growing program source for Gamay just down the road from our friends at Usonia in between Cayuga Lake and Seneca Lake.

  • Caywood Vineyard (Finger Lakes AVA)– Our source of Blaufrankisch & Vidal. Originally managed by Doyle, now Weis, it’s unfortunately conventional despite being part of the Finger Lakes Sustainable Growing Program. We’re working with Weis to improve the growing practices.

  • Airy Acres Vineyard (Finger Lakes AVA)– Our brand new sustainable growing program source of rkatsiteli.

  • Plus Various Small Organic Vineayrds Throughout Vermont